Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're just bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas? Our human societies seem to be erasing them, or ignoring them - maybe we think we're too busy for them.

Here on the New Christian Bible Study site, we'll buck the trend. We want to explore the big ideas that give us a framework for living better lives. Here's a start on a list of big ideas from a New Christian perspective. For each idea, there is a footnote that lists some references in Swedenborg's theological works:

1. God exists. Just one God, who created and sustains the entire universe in all its dimensions, spiritual and physical. ¹

2. God's essence is love itself. It's the force that drives everything. ²

3. God's essence comes into being, that is, it exists, in and through creation. ³

4. There are levels, or degrees, of creation - ranging from spiritual ones that we can't detect with our physical senses or sensors, to the level of the physical universe where most of our awareness is when we're alive here. ⁴

5. The created universe emanates from God, and it's sustained by God, but in an important way it is separate from God. He wants it to be separate, so that freedom can exist. ⁵

6. God operates from love through wisdom - willing good things, and understanding how to bring them about. ⁶

7. The physical level of creation exists to provide human beings with an opportunity to choose in freedom, with rationality, whether or not to acknowledge and cooperate with God. ⁷

8. God provides all people everywhere, regardless of their religion, the freedom to choose to live a life of love to God and to the neighbor. ⁸

9. God loves everyone. He knows that true happiness only comes when we're unselfish; when we're truly motivated by a love of the Lord which is grounded out in a love of the neighbor. He seeks to lead everyone, but will not force us to follow against our will. ⁹

10. God doesn't judge us. He tells us what's good, and what's evil, and flows into our minds to lead us towards good. However, we're free to reject his leading, and instead opt to love ourselves most. Day by day, we create habits of generosity or of selfishness, and live out a life in accordance with those habits. Those habits become the real "us", our ruling love. ¹⁰

11. Our physical bodies die eventually, but the spiritual part of our minds keeps going. It's been operating on a spiritual plane already, but our awareness shifts - so that we become fully aware of spiritual reality. ¹¹

Footnotes:

16. It therefore stands to reason that God is a person and in this way is God manifest--not manifest from himself, but manifest in himself. The one who is manifest in himself is the God who is the source of all.

2586. 'For Jehovah had completely closed every womb of Abimelech's house' means sterility, that is to say, of doctrine. This is clear from the meaning of 'completely closing the womb' as preventing conception itself, and from the meaning of 'Abimelech's house' as the good that belongs to the doctrine of faith, from which it is evident that sterility is meant. The reason why in this chapter the name 'God' is used up to this point, and 'Jehovah' for the first time now, is that 'God' is used when truth is the subject but 'Jehovah' when good is the subject. Doctrine is conceived wholly from good as the father, but birth is given to it through truth as the mother, as stated several times already. Here it is the conception of it that is dealt with, and because it is conceived from good the name 'Jehovah' is used; but above it is the birth of it that is dealt with, and because it is given birth through truth the name 'God' is used, as in the previous verse, 'God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his women servants, and they gave birth'.

[2] Similarly in other places in the Word where conception is referred to, as in Isaiah,

Jehovah has called me from the womb. Jehovah who formed me from the womb has said.... I will at that time be precious to Jehovah, and my God will be my strength. Isaiah 49:1, 5.

'Strength' has reference to truth and therefore 'God' is used. In the same prophet,

Thus said Jehovah, your Maker, and He who formed you from the womb. Isaiah 44:2, 24.

And elsewhere. For the same reason also the phrase 'Abimelech's house' is used, which means the good that belongs to the doctrine of faith. As regards 'a house' meaning good, see 2048, 2233, and 'Abimelech' the doctrine of faith, 2509, 2510. The statements that 'they gave birth' and 'the wombs of Abimelech's house were closed on account of Sarah', it is evident, hold a Divine arcanum within them, but this arcanum cannot possibly be disclosed except by means of the internal sense.